... extreme anxiety, and feelings of paranoia. The loose cannon was now ricocheting about like the ball in a pinball machine. He was taken up to New York to see the CIA-approved Dr Abramson who seems to have realised that there was going to be no easy fix here. Then it was decided that Olson should be taken away to a secure CIA-approved asylum and the forcible removal of Olson from the Hotel Statler was entrusted to two 'goons'. Things got out of hand in the hotel room and Olson was precipitated out the window with the goons probably thinking, they'll thank us for this (indeed, they might even have been instructed to do same). The two goons ...

... that continuing with directly funded radio broadcasting that was obviously linked to the US government was likely to be counterproductive in propaganda terms. It concluded that a range of 'private' initiatives should be established through which future funding could be channelled and deniability ensured. A specific step in enabling this course of action to be adopted came in 1949 with National Security Council Directive 10/2. This empowered the CIA to spend money on whatever or whomever it felt would be beneficial to US interests without having to explain its decisions, leave any trace of them, or produce financial accounts of how much money it had disbursed. This strategy resulted almost immediately in the setting up of Radio Free Europe ...

... other communications, damaging his business and his income. He says this has been going on for more than 10 years, and continues to do so. Kennedy eventually took his complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), set up under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, to hear complaints relating to conduct by the intelligence and security agencies, and complaints about phone-tapping. It is also the only appropriate Tribunal for the purpose of certain proceedings under s7(1 )( a) of the Human Rights Act 1998: claims that a public authority has acted in a manner that is incompatible with a Convention right. In January 2005, the IPT ruled that no determination ...

... In that I repeat for the umpteenth time Peter Wright's story in Spycatcher that MI5 knew about the covert Soviet funding of the CPGB in the 1950s and neither exposed it nor tried to stop it. Wright is rubbished repeatedly by Andrew and he does not refer to this claim of Wright's. However on p. 403 he writes this: 'The Security Service had "good coverage" of the secret Soviet funding of the CPGB, monitoring by surveillance and telecheck the regular collection of Moscow's cash subsidies by two members of the Party's International Department, Eileen Palmer and Bob Stewart, from the north London address of two ex-trainees of the Moscow Radio School.’ This isn't dated but from the context it ...

... supporters claimed that Kerr had acted on orders from the CIA.’ Wheen does not offer an opinion on whether the 'furious Whitlam supporters' were right or wrong (I don't think he cares); he's interested in the 'true Seventies fashion'. Once again we get the Private Eye-cynical hack view of Harold Wilson's attempts to get an investigation of the security Page 143 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 services going: Wilson was paranoid and (using Bernard Donoughue's diaries as evidence), Marcia Williams was dreadful. 'The daily drama in Wilson's kitchen cabinet was a Strindberg play with scenes from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’ (p. 214) We get another go round Watergate and Nixon without any ...

... is raising £20m-£30m from shareholders as it prepares to start drilling in the Falkland Islands, where it believes up to 3bn barrels of oil and gas may be recoverable.’ UFO tourists? In 1993, an RAF Wing Commander lobbied MoD officials about the need for a properly funded study of UFOs. He told them: 'The national security implications [of UFOs] are considerable. We have many reports of strange objects in the skies and have never investigated them.’ He added: 'If the sightings are of devices not of earth then their purpose needs to be established as a matter of priority. There has been no apparently hostile intent and other possibilities are: (1) ...

... Contents Lobster 58 Whose Prospect? Solomon Hughes Prospect magazine have confirmed a series of connections to the British secret state, including dinner meetings, seminars and taking on the son of MI6 boss John Scarlett as an intern. The links with the security services are a potential embarrassment for the magazine, which has been compared to Encounter, a centre left journal which suffered a crisis in 1967 because of too close relations with the CIA.1 There is no suggestion here that Prospect has received money from the security services like Encounter, but Prospect editor David Goodhart accepted he met with secret state officials a number of times. John Scarlett Junior, son of MI6 boss John Scarlett, worked as ...

... of obituaries that commented on his brief period of fame and the claims he subsequently made about his career's demise. Most of the accounts suggested that he was eccentric, slightly paranoid, of little talent and had an exaggerated sense of his own significance. The reader's attention was drawn to his comments that he had been Contents classified as a national security risk by the Special Branch and that the CIA effectively controlled broadcasting in the UK.1 Dee served in the RAF from 1953 to 1958, spending much of this time in the Middle East, culminating in his being attached to RAF Intelligence in Baghdad in 1957-1958. This was a critical period that saw the UK humiliated by the USA during the ...

... any conceivable British government yet) is thinking of prohibiting. The EU to the rescue? They may yet not need to: the European Union may do it for them. The EU is discussing proposals for a European Systemic Risk Board and three supervisory bodies: a European Banking Authority, a European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and a European Securities and Markets Authority, planned to come into being at the end of 2010. Precisely what these will do, if they get created, is not clear. But the threat is alarming the City's boosters. In October the Commons Treasury Committee announced 'an urgent inquiry over fears that European Union plans for financial regulation and supervision could damage London's ...

... Continues at the foot of the next column. Page 65 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 the Afghan invasion and some less well-known operations were all implemented by Phoenix/Rural Pacification alumni. One well- known CIA critic wrote recently how surprised he had been that Colin Powell was either easily deceived or willing to deceive in his capacity as national security advisor. This same person said to me he was unaware of the role Powell played in attempts to cover up My Lai.7 Amidst the recent excited debate about the CIA's actions over the past eight years, one could be forgiven for thinking that Philip Agee had never lived and that the Church and Pike Committees had never met. Even Mr ...